I used my column this morning to share some of the reaction you gave me regarding the dozens of burned-out streetlights along Interstates 690 and 81 in Syracuse. The major point seemed to be that fixing streetlights could provide one tiny precedent for establishing a real system of municipal cooperation - and that if we can't do it with something so simple, how can we even think about merging metropolitan governments or services?

To me, it is reminscient of one other tiny and maddening example - the trash that builds up along the guardrail and approach area for the Herald Place bridge on the downtown exit from the West Street arterial. By contract, the city is supposed to clean one side of it, the state the other. Last year, I kid you not, the state had it closed down and carefully cleaned its own side. The city, which dutifully cleans 90 percent of West Street, never - as in never - cleans that area or an adjacent trashed island, which provides a visual greeting for thousands upon thousands of visitors going to National Grid and the Dinosaur and other businesses in that district. It is too dangerous to be cleaned by volunteers, but could be done easily - in an hour - by a work crew. You look at that and think, "For God's sake. Someone make two phone calls and work this out."

My son and I took a ride last night on the stretch of Interstate 690 in Syracuse between West Street and the DeWitt border. In that span, we counted at least 34 broken interstate streetlights. That leaves you wondering about the total number of broken lights along the interstates in Syracuse, which was the point made by Larry Cummings in today's column.

Let's put it this way ... In the midst of making a lot of calls about the problem to multiple agencies, one guy told me off-the-record, "We're not surprised someone's asking about this."

The problem, it seems, involves the expense and physical difficulty in shutting down lanes to fix streetlights along an interstate. But it is magnified by a bureaucratic maze. The state put up the lights and has to coordinate shutting down the traffic. National Grid handles the wiring and has to be around to turn on the power. And the city - in a move that makes the least sense of all - agreed in the early days of the interstates to handle maintenance for the lights, a job which seems a little beyond the normal parameters for any municipal department of public works.

Clearly, the two immediate questions are whether we need those lights at all - and, if so, if there aren't more efficient and easy-to-fix versions than the ones we're using. But the problem is another pocket-sized example of the maddening lack of coordination in local agencies. There ought to be an efficient process for monitoring whether the lights are on and off, and then finding ways to fix them as quickly as possible - rather than the existing cycle, which seems to be a fix every five or six years, once a lot of lights go out and drivers start complaining to the media.

It is a little thing, but a bagful of little things end up defining a community.